


metempsychosis

by orphan_account



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: M/M, Multi, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-17
Updated: 2015-11-24
Packaged: 2018-05-01 22:10:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5222798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s like a dream that he knows he’s had before, once upon a time, its image slipping out of his grasp just as soon as it starts to sharpen.</p><p>(It’s a reincarnation AU.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_“We are all going forward. None of us are going back.” ―Richard Siken, Snow and Dirty Rain_

* * *

_Sometimes, on the rare occasions that his mind wanders and the words on the page in front of him don’t seem to make sense anymore, Alexander can see the color green blossom behind his tired eyelids. It’s never anything more than that; always just green. Occasionally, there are times that he can make out vague shapes, or moments where he thinks that he can hear laughter echoing around him, but nothing is ever distinct. It’s like a dream that he knows he’s had before, once upon a time, its image slipping out of his grasp just as soon as it starts to sharpen._

_Too often, these forays into the psyche of Alexander Hamilton end in bleary-eyed trips to bed, his slack body fitting itself comfortably between the cool and forgiving sheets. They allow him a reprieve from the heat of the mercilessly warm summer nights, and Alexander is thankful for it, but there’s no respite from the flashes of green—every shade from forest to chartreuse—even as his head sinks into his pillow. He watches the colors move past him like scenes from an old projector movie, flickering and distorted and blurred._

_Most mornings, he wakes up to the scent of carnations hanging thick in the air._

* * *

_New York City, New York, the United States of America, November of 2015_

The first time that Alexander Hamilton meets Aaron Burr, in all of his wintry glory, they’re waiting together.

He’s tall, sloe-eyed and strong-jawed, and his suit—a flattering, appropriate shade of dark navy—fits him well, but he seems austere in a way that strikes Alexander as incongruous with the rest of him. He appears at ease, in spite of the methodical ticking of the clock on the wall, and the stiff backs of the waiting room chairs, and the bluish glow of the fluorescent ceiling lights, and the way the receptionist behind the desk pops his gum every few minutes, yet his eyes are cold.

There’s a moment of silent contemplation that Alexander spends deliberating on whether introducing himself is a good idea before, finally, he pipes up.

“Are you interviewing for the internship, too?” He starts speaking before he moves from his seat, but by the time the other man realizes he’s being spoken to, they’re sitting beside each other. For an instant, amid his unresponsive silence, he thinks he’s offended him—until he responds, his voice deep and inexplicably fitting.

He’s slow, sure, and decisive: “So I am. The name’s Aaron Burr.”

Aaron’s words are carefully-chosen, and in spite of his reputation for incessant babble, Alexander hesitates. Four successful years of high school, and four successful years of college, and now he’s unsure how to proceed with a stranger in a law office. _You smell expensive. Familiar_. The thought, intrusive and nonsensical, gets shelved to the back of his mind almost as soon as it comes to him. He shudders as a ball of nerves begins to tighten in his chest; Aaron raises an eyebrow, something akin to suspicion blooming on his face. _Why are you so nervous?_ His brain zeroes in on that last word, the _n_ -word, and begins to play it on a loop. _Nervous_. _Nervous_. _Nervous_.

He launches into a long-winded, but breathless, explanation after a beat. It’s a spiel he’s been on countless times, with minor edits. “Oh. Um, Alexander Hamilton. First year at Columbia Law. And, before you say it, I do know this internship was advertised for second year students, but I wanted to get ahead of the game, you know? I know I want to go into defense, and Washington is supposed to be one of the best defense attorneys in the city, despite, you know, so I just thought—”

Aaron cuts him off abruptly, succinct in a way that Alexander has never been able to accomplish, “That you would try anyway? To each their own, Hamilton... _you know_.”

“Are we doing that? The last names thing?” His brows stitch together as he angles his face towards Aaron— _Burr_ , he mentally corrects himself—in an attempt to maintain eye contact; as if by magic, Burr shifts in his seat to face him almost instantly. The feeling in his chest, of knowing him, swells when his eyes meet his, Burr’s black locked with his own deep brown. They both look away.

“I wasn’t aware it was a ‘thing’, but I suppose so.” A pause fills the space between them as Burr opens his briefcase and pulls out a résumé. He doesn’t offer it to Alexander, as he had expected, but instead examines it himself, as though he’s searching for mistakes within it. From Alexander’s distorted perspective, it looks perfect. Burr doesn’t look up when he adds, “I’m a lion, too, for the record. Undergrad and now law.”

It takes him a moment to piece together exactly what Burr means by that.

“Oh! Repre _sent_ , man! You must have been wicked smart in high school if you got in for undergrad. Not that you’re not wicked smart now, of course, but—” He’s cut off again, but this time, it’s by Burr chuckling.

“I understand. It wasn’t like that, anyway.” Another fleeting pause before Burr continues in a lower voice, “My father is a Trustee.” And, just like that, with the word ‘ _Trustee_ ’ brought into the conversation, everything makes sense to Alexander, from Burr’s coldness to his presence at Washington & Hanover in the first place.

Anyone who wants to be anyone in criminal defense around New York knows there are two types of people that the offices of Washington & Hanover are interested in these days. The first group includes the downtrodden and impoverished, who, without George Washington’s pro bono work, would likely go without any sufficient legal representation at all; the second is composed of wealthy, but arrogant, individuals seeking out George Hanover to assist them with their legal troubles. Alexander’s never been quite sure when the divide was, when Washington and Hanover stopped being partners and started simply existing in the same space together, representing entirely different clientele from each other. He figures that Burr is likely interested in working for Hanover, though—not Washington. It’s not often that rich boys want anything to do with representing the lower class.

And, then, for the second time in the span of five minutes, something important dawns on him.

“Oh my God. You’re _that_ Burr.”

Alexander knows his father—or, at the very least, knows _of_ him. During the weeks of research regarding Columbia he had committed before embarking for New York, he’d delved into the faculty, and into the Board of Trustees, and he’d even read of Burr himself, too, in passing.

“Pardon?” Suddenly, there’s something tense, _stiff_ , about Aaron, and Alexander can’t quite place what it was that he did, what he _said_ , to cause it. He opens his mouth, an apology already on the tip of his tongue, but he’s interrupted before he can get the words out. The door leading back to Washington and Hanover’s offices—a heavy-looking, dark cherry that makes him think of wealth—is swung open by the receptionist, silencing Alexander and beckoning Burr to his interview all at once. As he rises, Aaron nods politely in his direction and says, “Until next time.”

“‘Til next time.” There’s a quiet wistfulness to his voice, though he’s not sure where in him it came from.He pauses, watching as Burr’s navy-clad body moves towards the door, before adding, “Good luck.”

Even as he walks away, Alexander cannot ignore the feeling, nagging at the back of his mind, that he _knows_ him from somewhere.

* * *

The interior of George Washington’s private office is at once the exact opposite of what Alexander expected of it _and_ exactly what he envisioned it to be like. It’s spacious, but not in an overwhelming way, and one wall out of four is made up entirely of floor-to-ceiling bookcases, stocked with just about every legal book Alexander can begin to imagine and then some. Scattered among them is the odd _other_ book, the ones that don’t quite seem to fit with the rest: ones like the Holy Bible, its spine cracked and worn, or the thin copy of _Le Petit Prince_ , which appears to be in its original French. 

Then, hanging over Washington’s green, tufted leather chair, is a corkboard nearly as long as the wall is wide, but it’s what’s pinned into it that makes it remarkable. There are pictures—far too many to count—of Washington and a wide array of people, people that Alexander can only assume are past clients of his; most of them are awkwardly-angled selfies, taken on the courthouse steps. It looks like it belongs in a particularly nostalgic college student’s dorm room, not a distinguished attorney’s office.

He’s staring at the corkboard, lost in thought, when the office door opening startles him out of his reverie.

“Sorry to have kept you waiting. I trust that Lafayette showed you the way without any… mishaps along the way?” Washington’s voice dips into uncertainty as he asks about the receptionist. Alexander notes almost immediately that it’s deeper than his own; it’s not dissimilar to Burr’s, in that regard, but it lacks the severity unmistakably unique to Aaron. In fact, where there was frigidity in Burr, there’s warmth in Washington—in the comfortable fluidity with which he sits down, in the way his eyebrows pull together as he looks at Alexander, in the soft crinkles around his eyes that form as he talks. It’s a slightly jarring, but welcome, change.

Much to Alexander’s chagrin, Washington towers over him, coming in at at _least_ six feet, and he seems strangely approachable in spite of wearing his wealth on his sleeve— _literally_. His suit is a lavish, gray three-piece and obviously tailored to fit him; his cuff links, glittering and a deep crimson color. He fills up the empty space of the office just with his presence, and for Alexander, that’s something to be _admired_. He has a hunger within him to someday have the same effect—preferably sooner, rather than later, if he has any say in it.

When Washington looks at him, his gaze expectant, he takes it as his cue to speak. He’s never been able to control his gesticulating, and it starts almost as soon as he begins to say, “It’s fine! He was fine. He didn’t get me into _too_ much trouble.” Washington’s expression is unflinching, and after a moment of dead silence, his arms fall to his lap, and he adds, “That was a joke, for the record. Just kidding. Ha, ha, you know? Sorry. My name is Alexander Hamilton.” He starts to rise and outstretch his hand, ready to shake, but he’s waved down.

“So I’ve heard. Tell me about yourself, Alexander.” Washington leans back in his chair then, a single eyebrow raised and fingers tented like some kind of cliché action movie villain. It’s almost intimidating.

The thing is, Alexander _knows_ this. He’s prepared for this exact question. He’s read all of the ‘Top 10 Interview Tips’ articles, practiced in the mirror, written answers on index cards to memorize, then polished them to the point where they no longer sounded natural at all, but, rather, rehearsed. He knows to keep it succinct and to zero on what will make him the best pick for Washington  & Hanover’s legal intern, to give _examples_ from his background that are relevant to why he’s appropriate for the job, but _not_ to spend half an hour detailing his entire life story.

He knows it all, and he’s geared up and ready to go when he says, “Oh. Okay. Alexander Hamilton. That’s me. First year student at Columbia Law. I received my B.A. from—”

To his surprise, Washington simply shakes his head, interrupting him, and explains, “I didn’t mean _that_ ; I can gather all of that from your résumé. Your résumé doesn’t tell me anything about _you_ —your favorite show, or your best friend’s name, or where you grew up, or what you think you might want to do when you eventually retire. Tell me about you.”

He didn’t prepare for that.

“I—” Another expectant look. “I don’t really have a best friend. Actually, I don’t really have friends, _period_.” Washington’s expression is suddenly indecipherable, some amalgamation of doubt and doleful lenity, and Alexander can feel the atmosphere of the room getting less friendly as the seconds tick by. “I’m good at what I do, though. Sir. I’m unbeatable in an argument, and that’s all defense really is, right? Arguing for your client? I mean, I know I won’t be doing any actual trial work here, of course, but I’m going to. Someday. Plus, I don’t mind paperwork. I know most people don’t really like it, but it doesn’t bother me.”

Without delay, the voice in the back of his head chimes in, _Yes, it does, too, bother you; you know you’re better than sitting around, drafting appeals,_ and there’s something that stings about that. Maybe it’s that he knows that, if he manages to land the internship, he’s proven to himself and to the world that he can do it, even if he’s a year younger than he should be, and he wants there to be something _more_  than an appeal to back the notion that he’s capable up. Or maybe he’s just selfish.

“You drive a hard bargain, Mr. Hamilton—” There’s a playful edge to his tone, and it allows Alexander to relax, if only momentarily. He tries to interrupt, to tell him that just Alexander is fine, but Washington barely misses a beat. “—and your reference letters—all _six_ of them, thank you—are glowing.” As quickly as his relaxation had set in, it disappears again, and a sense of apprehension, of awful disquiet, replaces it. His nerves, which had been running rampant around Burr, return in full force.

Later, as he’s standing, still and silent, in the elevator, on his way out of the building, he can’t help but think that the last twenty minutes of the interview were the longest and most painful of his life.

* * *

It’s not until he’s two blocks away that Alexander feels like he can breathe again. He _knows_ the interview went poorly; he knows he was brusque, that his answers likely came off as too rehearsed, that his chances started off slim anyway. He knows that Washington has probably already shelved his résumé, as well as his reference letters, and the thought of that alone cuts him deep. He wants this, desperately, at whatever cost, and having it slip through his fingers is dumbfounding at best.

 _At least, if I don’t get it, hopefully Aaron does_. The thought is a negligible comfort amid his anxiety.

He’s engrossed in his thoughts fully as he makes his way down the street, fingers clutched so tightly around the strap of his leather messenger bag that his knuckles have gone white. The city around him, normally so vibrant and full of life, has faded to shades of gray—the smell of car exhaust and garbage, a scent particular to New York, is barely reaching him, and the sounds of honking and chatter and music are muted, insignificant compared to the pressing weight of his failed interview.

His quiet, contemplative reverie is largely uninterrupted until he collides with a young man, standing in the middle of the sidewalk in front of a McDonald’s. A flurry of conversation happens at once.

A man beside Alexander’s victim says in his direction, “Hey, watch where you’re going!” He’s tall, almost as tall as Washington, and wearing a white t-shirt with the words ‘Raise the Wage!’ printed on it in blocky red letters.

The man he’d ran into snaps back at him with a smile on his face, “Shut up, Herc.” He quiets almost immediately, and that’s when Alexander realizes that the two of them are wearing identical t-shirts, as are all the people surrounding them. They even have stacks of flyers in their hands, with the same ‘Raise the Wage!’ logo printed at the top of each page. It looks like a protest, and suddenly, Alexander is intrigued.

“I’m so sorry, I—”

“I’m fine, man, don’t worry about it.” The man’s smile widens then, carefree and easygoing, and Alexander’s heart starts thrumming in his chest like a hummingbird’s. The same feeling he’d had with Burr—the feeling of familiarity, of inexplicable closeness—returns, and when he blinks, he thinks he can see traces of green starting to bloom. The man holds one of his flyers out to him and says, “Here, take one of these. It’s about raising—”

Alexander cuts him off with an abruptness normally reserved for his arguments. 

“—the minimum wage. I know. Our current one isn’t livable, and most people seem to think that, if we raise the wage to—”

He chimes in then: “Fifteen an hour?”

“Yeah, exactly. If we raise it to fifteen, we’ll lose jobs, but that’s—”

They finish together, speaking in unison.

“—not true.”

“Not true!”

The man laughs, and it sounds a little beautiful to Alexander, but he pushes that thought to the deepest recesses of his mind, where he’s forced the feeling of knowing him to as well. After a moment, the man plucks the flyer out of Alexander’s hands, quietly claiming that he doesn’t need it. From his side, the man he’d addressed previously as Herc simply rolls his eyes. He doesn’t know if they’re impressed or annoyed by him, but without being prompted by either, he offers, “I’m Alexander.”

“Hi, Alexander. John Laurens, but you can call me Jack.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for taking the time to read this! Shameless self-plug, but I’m over on Twitter (@johnlaurns), if you do the Tweet thing.


	2. Chapter 2

_“nothing was corrected last time. nothing will be corrected this time.” —Charles Bukowski, the riots_

* * *

  _New York City, New York, the United States of America, February of 1989_

All that Alexander can see are the lights, flashing all around him; every second, they change color, from blue to pink to yellow to green to purple to red and then all over again. The throng of bodies he’s trying to move through, the smell of sweat and booze heavy in the air—it’s all lost to the rainbow flickering throughout the club. It’s times like these that he can feel fire ignited in his veins, white-hot, and it’s at raves like these that he feels alive.

Someone’s drink splashing onto his shoulder as they squeeze past him snaps him back to reality, and he remembers that his roommate—Aaron, the boring old fool, bless his heart—reminded him to be safe tonight. In Burr’s language, that means not to drink too much and not to go home with anyone questionable. Unfortunately, he hasn’t quite heeded the first half of his instructions; he’s already thoroughly liquored up and on his way for more, the bar on the far side of the room lit up and glowing like a beacon, beckoning him to it.

Alexander’s halfway to the bar when a girl, unfamiliar but breathtaking nonetheless, takes his arm and shouts something at him, a grin on her face. He can’t hear her over the music, but he just smiles back and yells, “Anything you want!” He thinks she laughs, and then she’s pulling him in close to dance, and he can smell the sickeningly sweet scent of artificial cherry. He thinks it’s her perfume, or maybe a particularly fragrant lip gloss that she’s wearing; he wants to drown in it.

A laugh almost bubbles up out of his mouth when he realizes that the girl, lithe as she is, is trying to actually dance, while the rest of the room is just swaying and writhing arrhythmically around them. It carries on for a few seconds longer, mostly because he’s appreciating watching it, but then he stops her. He’s gentle, placing his hands tenderly on her waist and guiding her until they’re flush against each other. She’s motionless, though, frozen in place with her eyes wide like a deer in headlights, so it’s Alexander who moves his hips first. In spite of the blush blooming in her cheeks, the girl quickly follows his lead—and keeps up, too.

He doesn’t know how long they stay like that, her grinding on him and him grinding back on her, but after what seems like a lifetime, he feels her small hands clutch the fabric of his shirt, hears her say into his ear, “Can we take a break?” In a matter of moments, he’s wordlessly leading her out of the club, onto the street.

When the brisk night air hits him, it’s sobering, and he finally notices how out-of-place the girl must look compared to the rest of them. It’s not just that her clothes are out of place, or that she looks amazed by every minuscule thing that happens to her, or that Alexander is fairly certain she hasn’t had a drop to drink; it’s something else entirely, something that he can’t quite put his finger on.

She’s breathless when she leans—almost collapsing—against the brick exterior wall of the club, her chest rising and falling methodically with every breath that she takes. The grin on her face hasn’t budged since she grabbed him in the first place, and it’s still there when she turns to him and says, “Thanks for dancing with me. I’m Eliza.” Alexander mulls over her name for a long moment in some misguided attempt to get used to the way thinking of her feels.

It gets nowhere; he’s still trying to wrap his head around her when he responds, “Alexander. You from around here?”

“No. No, I’m from upstate. It’s my sister’s birthday, so we just came into the city to celebrate.” Eliza’s somewhere between bashful and proud of her origin, and Alexander almost wants to kiss her for it. And he sort of does—later, when they’ve returned to the club and to dancing with each other, after she tells him that it was her older sister who goaded her into approaching him in the first place. He swoops down, and he thinks it’s going to be romantic and perfect, like in the movies, but he knocks his nose into hers in the process, and it hurts instead. Eliza doesn’t mind; she kisses his nose, and then she kisses his mouth, and it’s _almost_ perfect, which is good enough for him.

On the other side of the room, behind the bar Alexander never reached, stands a freckled, curly-haired bartender, a grin on his face and an immeasurable tiredness in his eyes. He serves drink after drink after drink, cracks jokes with the ravers every so often, and hands the particularly rowdy ones off to the bouncer—his best friend—when necessary. John Laurens is entirely unaware of Alexander Hamilton’s presence—his past _and_ his future, existing at once in the same person—but perhaps it’s better that way.

* * *

_New York City, New York, the United States of America, November of 2015_

When Alexander jolts awake, his head is pounding. He’s disoriented, and outside, the sky is still a deep bluish-gray, stars still dotted and glittering in the darkness of the night. He can’t remember his whole dream—the thing that had startled him out of sleep in the first place—but he recalls bits and pieces, small vignettes that make up fractions of the larger picture. There’s a girl he’s certain he’s dreamt of before, and there’s a blur of different colors, and there’s even music. He can’t make out the words of the song, but he can almost feel the bass pulsing as he lies in bed. After a moment, he realizes that its beat matches the steady throbbing in his head.

It takes nearly all of his strength to glance blearily over at the digital clock on his bedside table, and he lets out an audible groan when he sees that it reads half past five. Too late to go back to sleep, but too early for him to function.

“Already?” he asks to his empty bedroom, pressing the heels of his hands into his tired eyes, as if that would do anything to wake him up. The only response he gets is his cat meowing from the living room. He allots himself ten more minutes to lie in bed, and while he does, he creates a mental checklist for the day. It’s a habit of his, although his checklists often don’t get completed in their entireties, though that’s through no fault of his own. Humans are unpredictable, as a rule, and have a tendency to interfere with his plans, even and especially the more painstakingly laid-out ones.

He knows his classes are the priority for the day, even if he hates some of them, and he knows that, in spite of the idealistic hope running through him that he might still have a shot at the Washington & Hanover internship after his bombing his interview yesterday, he ought to look for more to apply to—sooner, rather than later. He knows he has papers due, cases to study, columns to write for the tribune, research to do for moot court.

Perhaps most significantly, he knows that he doesn’t have enough hours in the day to get everything done.

Alexander’s ten minutes turn into fifteen, which then turn into twenty, and into thirty, and after that, he stops counting. When he eventually drags himself out of bed, it’s almost a quarter past six. His first class of the day—a lecture on legal methods that meets three times a week, open only to first-year students and taught by an inept professor—isn’t for another hour and forty-five minutes, but he knows that he has to rush if he wants breakfast _and_ punctuality.

The trek from his bedroom to the cramped bathroom seems like it takes forever, but Alexander thinks that might just be because everything feels slow and languid and not quite real before the sun has risen. When he feels his cat weave through his legs, obviously seeking his attention, he stops to crouch and scratch behind her ears. Part of him is stalling so that he doesn’t have to shower immediately, and he’s completely aware of it, but he doesn’t stop petting her or cooing soft greetings in the dim hallway. Not immediately, anyway.

It takes him another ten minutes to stop wasting time and get into the shower; when he does, the spray of water on his bare chest is warm and inviting, and drowsiness starts to engulf him all over again. He decides, without putting any significant amount of thought into it, that he never wants to leave—and then he remembers the coffee girl.

* * *

Double Dutch Espresso is a coffee shop in South Harlem—situated just across Morningside Park from Columbia—that was borne from its owners’ two earlier establishments, Lenox Coffee and The Chipped Cup. Since opening its doors in 2013, it’s become something of a haven for hipsters and serious coffee connoisseurs alike. The former appreciates the shop’s so-called _ch_ _ic_ , industrial interior and biweekly open mic slam poetry nights, whereas the latter simply enjoys the extensive menu of brews. Four times a year, when exam seasons approach, it floods with students from Columbia looking for a place to cram.

Alexander Hamilton is among those students, but there’s another reason he goes to Double Dutch, and her name is Eliza.

He doesn’t know anything else about her. He doesn’t know her last name, or where she’s from, or how old she is, or what things she likes, or if she’s a student, like him, or not. He doesn’t even know her coffee order, even though he’s told her his countless times. Truthfully, he doesn’t know a single concrete thing about her. All he knows is that he’s drawn to her, like a moth to a flame, and that’s what keeps him coming back for more, in spite of the steady dwindle of his bank account as he approaches the end of the month.

When he barges noisily into the shop at seven, his hair still damp from his shower and his scarf thrown so haphazardly around his neck that it’s in danger of slipping off altogether, he’s more than a little disheartened to find that there’s a line. It’s not particularly long—he might have to wait five or ten minutes, at the most—but the thought of _any_ amount of delay of his morning chat with Eliza is aggravating to him. Of course, it’s not _so_ aggravating that he turns and leaves, prepared to simply try again tomorrow, but, rather, just aggravating enough that he spends his entire wait with his arms crossed and brows stitched together in clear annoyance.

There’s a moment when Alexander reaches the counter where neither of them speak, though it’s not quite  _silent_. There’s still the early morning bustle of the coffee shop happening around them; that just doesn’t matter to him. Against his expectations, Eliza almost looks like she’s sizing him up, and that alone is enough to soften his features.

He doesn’t know what he does to make her laugh, but she does, and for a split second, it sounds like a melody that he’s heard before, like some leftover memory from his childhood. There’s no time to ponder it, though, because then she asks him, “Bad morning?”

“Sure. Until _now_ , that is,” he responds, the words rolling off his tongue with a confidence he’s not accustomed to around her. When she smiles, his face lights up—the corners of his eyes crinkle, his cheeks dimple.

Later, though, he insists that what happened next  _wasn’t_ his fault.

High off of the successful delivery of his attempt at a pick-up line, Alexander tries to lean onto the counter, propped up by the palm of his hand, but manages to just overshoot it and knock his arm directly into a large mason jar filled with biscotti. At first, he thinks that it’ll just displace it a couple of inches, maybe even jostle a few of the biscotti. He thinks it’ll be fine, and for a moment, it is.

That split-second afforded to him ends far too quickly, and next thing he knows, the jar topples over onto its side, and the biscuits are left scattered all over the expansive black counter. One even skids to the floor and bounces off of the toe of his shoe. Any semblance of dignity he’d had slips out of his reach in a single instant. A familiar chorus of laughter behind him, flagrant and biting, makes him want to sink through the floor and disappear altogether.

For the next minute, Alexander has but one thought running through his mind: _Fuck_. _Jefferson’s here_.

While he starts to clean up his mess, Eliza watching with her mouth open in some mixture of shock and confusion, he does his best to ignore the fact that Tom Jefferson—a fellow law student who most _definitely_ has it out for him—and his best friend, James Madison, are just a few places behind him in line, laughing at him. 

It’s not easy, but it gets a little less difficult when Eliza pipes up, “So, do you think we can get your order situated now?” He almost melts when he looks up and sees that she doesn’t appear to be angry with him.

“Yeah. Yeah, we can do that. Um, a cortado, please—two extra shots of espresso. To go.” His voice starts to slow when he sees that she’s mouthing his order along with him, like she has it memorized, too. His embarrassment intensifies as she writes his name on the cardboard cup in black Sharpie without even asking him for it.

She draws something, but from the other side of the counter, he can’t see what it is.

“That’ll be right out.” While Eliza’s sendoff is perky in a rehearsed way, the smile she flashes him is genuine. He lingers there at the counter, watches the swing of her dark hair against her narrow shoulders as she passes his cup off to another employee and the way she laughs—ebullient and bright and so quintessentially _her_ —at some joke the two of them exchange, one that Alexander only half-hears over the early morning din of the coffee shop. It’s Jefferson shouting at him from the back of the line to _get a move on already_ that spurs him into the action and allows the line to move forward.

A few minutes later, when his coffee is finished and Eliza passes it to him, Alexander hesitates just a moment too long. He knows he should say _something_ to her, but by the time a half-coherent sentence forms in his mind, she’s already told him to have a great day and turned away, back to her job. There’s not much left that he can do today, so he turns and beelines for the door, his thoughts still foggy with Eliza.

He’s almost out when he suddenly feels his scarf unraveling from around his neck, and he’s not the least bit surprised to see that Jefferson is responsible. With one hand wrapped around the end of Alexander’s scarf and the other placed firmly on James’ shoulder, a gray pea coat on with its collar popped, and his hair running amok, Tom _looks_ as smug as he acts, and Alexander wants to— He’s not entirely sure what he wants to do, actually. 

Sometimes, he wants to tear him down verbally, maybe with a particularly nastily-worded blog post, but others, he thinks he would be okay with just sucker-punching him in his perfect jaw.

Their rivalry—if that’s even an appropriate term for it, really—had started on the very first day of class and simply progressed from there. Jefferson, who’s enrolled in a dual-degree program with the graduate school of international affairs at Columbia, wasn’t likely to be in any of his classes in the first place, but through some coincidence, some unlucky incident of divine intervention, there he’d been, front and center, in Alexander’s civil procedure lecture.

It took them all of ten minutes to disagree on something so fundamentally important to civil procedure that it required a debate.

(If he remembers correctly, it was the syllabus.)

It’s been two months, and they haven’t stopped arguing since.

“Is she your girlfriend?” He can already tell, just from the way Jefferson is eyeing him, that this is leading to something. It’s not just an innocent question, void of any punchline; it never is with Tom. That’s perhaps the single most infuriating thing about him to Alexander: everything’s a _joke_.

Ignoring him and whatever antics he has in store, he just asks, “Can I have my scarf back?”

“When you answer my question, sure. Why not? She your girlfriend?” There’s already a hint of a smile at the corners of Jefferson’s mouth, threatening to betray his attempt at a joke.

“No. She’s not my girlfriend, Tom,” Alexander breathes. Part of him desperately hopes that he can tell exactly how exasperated he is by him.

It’s clear that he can’t hold it in anymore, because, without warning, Jefferson starts to laugh. After a long moment filled entirely with his own laughter, he tosses Alexander’s scarf at him, saying, “I can see why! Biscotti doesn’t really stack up to flowers, man.”

The two of them are still cracking up at Tom’s awful jab as Alexander walks away, irritation burning in him. In one hand, he clutches his scarf tightly, his short fingernails gently widening the small holes in the knit, and in the other is his untouched coffee. There’s a voice in the back of his brain screaming at him to go back and hit him, or at least put him in his place, but, somehow, he ignores it. Instead, he allows the chill of early winter in New York to seep into his bones and replace the anger there.

He’s halfway down the block before he takes a drink, and for a moment, as he pulls the cup away from his mouth, he thinks he’s hallucinating. Beside his name, there’s a heart drawn in black Sharpie. It’s sloppy, but the shape is unmistakable.

Suddenly, the whole city seems a little brighter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, y’all, thanks for reading, once again! In case things aren’t clear, the gang’s reincarnation works in a pretty specific way: they have a defined start point in time (‘the firsts’, so to speak), but from there on out, they’ve kept on reincarnating over and over and over, and they will continue to do so. Which is why we can have a dumb 80’s club baby Hamilton.


	3. Chapter 3

_“Dead in Time_  
_You’re dead already_  
_What’s a little bit more time got to do_  
_with it”_  
_—Jack Kerouac, 169th Chorus_

* * *

_New York City, New York, the United States of America, November of 2015_

By the time lunch rolls around, Alexander’s had more than enough time to calm down from his lecture. It’s not that his professor isn’t a perfectly nice person (not that he  _knows_ , of course, but he’s giving him the benefit of the doubt) or an inadequate lawyer; his teaching is just so inherently  _wrong_ , so incompatible with Alexander, that makes his blood boil. In places where Alexander would like to challenge the status quo, his professor prefers to abide by traditional methods, droning on for three-fourths of their allotted time about how essential it is that the attorneys of tomorrow preserve the sanctity of the law. It makes him  _livid_ , and what’s worse is that they meet twice a day, every day.

A decent fraction of the time, he thinks that, by the end of the semester, Professor Arnold will have ran him out of law school altogether.

Alexander is grateful for the three hour break between classes with Arnold, though he never knows quite what to do in that time. Normally, he finds solace in a café near campus—not  _usually_  Double Dutch—or, on days when he’s feeling particularly socially uninclined, he makes the fifteen minute trek from Morningside Heights to South Harlem, back to his shoe box of an apartment. When he can, he squeezes lunch in, and when he can’t, he relies on coffee to fuel him until he can eat.

Some days, against his better judgment, he tries to call his father.

He’s walking north on Amsterdam, past buildings that have been on this soil far longer than he has, their facades constructed with brick in shades of red and brown, but intricate nonetheless, when he abruptly slows to a stop in the middle of the sidewalk, like something important occurred to him with no warning. Someone behind him grumbles as they’re forced to redirect their path, but he ignores them, absorbed entirely in himself. There’s still a sense of optimism coursing through his veins after his morning encounter with Eliza, and he’s committed to putting it to good use. 

He pulls his cell phone out of the back pocket of his jeans and dials his father’s number in a matter of seconds.

After the third ring, he’s wholly expecting it to go to voicemail, preparing himself both to hear his father’s voice instruct him to leave a message after the beep _and_  for the letdown that will inevitably come when he doesn’t try to get back to him. To his surprise, he picks up.

His voice sounds far away and confused when he asks, “Alex?”

Something flips in Alexander’s stomach then. His father is the only one who still clings to his childhood nickname; he’s the only one who hasn’t graduated to the more appropriate full-length version, and for some reason, that’s strangely meaningful. It’s like it keeps them frozen in time together, Alexander destined to remain a ten-year-old boy forever, wondering desperately why his father has vanished without a trace and when he’s coming back for him.

“Hi, Dad. I just got out of class, so I just thought I would call and see how you’re doing.”

Even he knows that he sounds awkward and stilted, all of his normal eloquence disappeared into the void, and as the conversation progresses, covering everything from school to his older brother to the approaching possibility of an internship to whether or not he’s making friends, he can feel it get increasingly uncomfortable on both ends. This is how their calls  _always_  go, and, deep down, he knows that it’s wrong to keep forcing something that’s not there until one of them—his father, usually—has the prudence to hang up. And yet, he keeps doing it. He keeps trying.

He’s almost to the corner of Amsterdam and 123rd when it happens, and it hurts even though there’s a part of him that’s been waiting for it the entire phone call. His father breathes out a sigh and, with no apparent intent to apologize on the horizon, says, “Alright, Alex. Well, I better get goi—”

“Do you have to?” Alexander interrupts. He doesn’t allow his father the time to deny him, because after a brief moment, he adds, all in one drawn-out breath, “Can you try to make it to New York for Christmas? I know it’s super short notice, and Florida is pretty far, but—”

“I don’t know, Alex.”

Without acknowledging that his father has said anything at all, he plows ahead: “—but the city’s supposed to be beautiful at Christmastime, and James still lives in Florida, too, you could just swing by Miami and bring him, and—”

“ _Alex_.” His voice has a harsh edge to it now, steely and severe and altogether unkind, and it quiets Alexander immediately. He hates that his father has that kind of power over him, that he’s able to  _silence_  him with a single, sharp word.

“Sorry.”

No warmth has returned to his voice when he says, “I’ll think about it, okay?”

“Oka—” There’s a quiet click before he has a chance to tell him goodbye, then dead air. Just like that, Alexander can feel his stomach twisting up into knots. He stows his phone in his messenger bag, where it’s lost almost immediately among his papers and books and pens and laptop, and keeps his eyes trained to the ground as he ducks into a tiny pizza parlor. It’s charming in a familiar way; most days, this is where he receives his midday meal. He knows the red-and-white checkered table cloths better than he knows that back of his own hand, and whenever he sees the large Italian flag splayed on the wall, he fondly remembers the picture of himself he took in front of it on his first day in New York City.

Tears are pricking at his eyes as the door swings shut behind him, but he does his best to blink them away before anyone inside can see. Any approximation of privacy is hard to come by in the city that never sleeps, but Alexander is determined not to let anyone catch him crying.

There are only two other groups of customers—a trio of young men and two teenage girls—standing at the register, and he falls in line behind them quickly, praying that they won’t take too long to order. He’s just desperate to eat and to get home, where he can forget that the last few seconds of the embarrassing phone call with his father ever happened at all.

* * *

_Miami, Florida, the United States of America, August of 1948_

It’s almost midnight, and there’s no breeze. The night air is warm and humid on Alex’s face, and his eyes are squeezed shut so tightly that they sting, colors that look a little bit like fireworks exploding behind his lids, moving and dancing and bursting until they fade into blackness. When he opens them, after what feels like a century of waiting in complete and unalterable stillness, James is shouting at him.

“Come  _on_ , Alex, just jump already!”

As he crouches on the ledge of his open bedroom window, the toes of his blue sneakers just barely hanging over the edge of it, his small, eleven-year-old hands grip the sill so firmly that his knuckles have traded their normal complexion for a shade of white. His older brother—thirteen and grinning like he’s without a care in the world and glowing in the summer moonlight—looks up at him from their yard and tries to goad him into joining him to no avail.

James’ dark hair is mussed and windswept from his own leap from the window, but apart from that, he looks  _okay_. Even from the second floor of their house, Alex can see that the gleam in his eyes, effervescent and jocular and exclusive to James, is still there, and nothing on him is broken or bruised or bloodied. That latter fact by itself almost makes him think that, should he decide to tumble blindly through the humid air towards the dark, grassy abyss, he would be okay, too.

As soon as he starts to get comfortable with the idea of jumping, he hears his brother’s voice again, tinged with annoyance. This time, it’s in their mother’s native tongue: “¡ _Ay dios mío_! Alex,  _te voy a dejar aquí_.”

His glow is more of a glower now, and Alex knows that that, coupled with the exasperated Spanish, means that he  _has_  to join him, even at the risk of a fractured limb.

Letting go and pushing off from the windowsill is easier than he imagined it would be, and within seconds, he feels himself sailing through the air towards the ground. He can’t help but think that, in the moonlight, the grass of their yard looks more navy than green, a wide expanse of deep almost-black with his brother standing in the middle of it in a t-shirt and blue jeans and sneakers that match his own.

His thoughts on the matter are cut short when he slams into the ground on his side. James snorts upon impact, and Alex wants to push himself up from the dirt and the grass and sock him directly in the arm, but the entire right half of his body  _aches_ , and so does his ego when he remembers how his brother had landed nimbly on his feet. James leans down, and for a split-second, he thinks that he’s going to gently help him up, but then he hooks their arms together at their elbows and pulls Alex roughly to his feet. Just like that, they’re off, his brother grinning while he tries to disregard the dull pain in his ribs.

He knows where they’re headed, though he hasn’t been clued into  _why_. All he knows is that, at half past ten, James had crept into his bedroom, awoken him in the midst of a dream that he’s had before—the one where he’s a war hero, proudly defending his troops against the enemy—and insisted that they sneak out together. He’d been particularly importunate that they go  _directly_  to the park on the corner.

They arrive in five minutes, maybe less. The path to the park is one they’ve walked many times. Alex dimly remembers their parents bringing them there as small children, when they were too young for school yet too old to be cooped up in the house at all times; when they were old enough to be trusted without constant parental supervision, they were allowed to make the trip with just each other, so long as they swore to check in with their mother every so often.

Neither boy has been to the park all summer—except now.

James beelines for the swings, but doesn’t use them for their intended purpose. He doesn’t speak either. He just sits there, both of his hands loosely curled around the metal chains, and for an excruciatingly long moment, Alex doesn’t have any clue what to do.

Finally, he settles on joining him.

He doesn’t know how long the silence lasts. It could have been just ten minutes of the cicadas’ song buzzing tunelessly around them, or it may have been somewhere closer to an hour of suffocating humidity. There’s no real way of telling how much time passes before James says, “I remember when Dad used to bring us here.  _Cosas eran buenas entonces_.”

The quiet between them gets heavier then, and it drags on awhile longer before Alex knows how to answer him. His voice is small, barely audible at all, when he asks, “Do you think he’s coming back?”

James doesn’t respond.

* * *

_New York City, New York, the United States of America, November of 2015_

The line in the pizza shop has inched forward only to allow the trio of men at the front of it to order when, behind Alexander, the door is flung open, and, suddenly, three voices speak in rapid succession. He doesn’t even glance back, far too absorbed in staring intently at his own shoes to bother. They’re a pair of blue sneakers that have seen far better days, the white rubber toes scuffed and dirty. The laces are tied too tightly on one foot and untied altogether on the other, and he knows he should kneel and fix it, but he doesn’t.

First, someone asks, “Hey, is that minimum wage guy?” He recognizes that boyish lilt, though he can’t quite place his finger on where from.

“ _Non_ , man, that’s six letters guy,” a second person drawls, his accent distinctly Southern. It makes a part of Alexander ache for his hometown, but he knows he has it too good in New York to retreat back to the coasts of Miami. There’s a pang in his chest as the voice in the back of his mind reminds him that there’s nothing left for him there, anyway.

Third, a deep voice says, “Six letters guy? What are you  _talking_  about, Laf?”

It’s only a few seconds after that that it hits him that they’re talking about  _him_ , that  _he’s_  minimum wage guy and six letters guy all at once, and when that occurs to him, when he realizes, he turns slowly to face them. The trio—the two men from the protest at the McDonald’s, John-Laurens-but-you-can-call-me-Jack and Herc, and Washington & Hanover’s receptionist, Lafayette—have resolved to bickering over his identity, and they don’t quiet, even when Alexander begins to watch them.

Jack notices him observing them first; he stops talking almost instantly. His expression, which had been a mess of furrowed brows and glinting eyes, softens, and he even flashes a smile at Alexander. Herc and Lafayette carry on, if only for a few seconds longer, but stop when they realize that Jack has gone silent. Identical expressions of confusion dawn on them at the exact same moment.

“ _Quoi, boug_ —?” Lafayette starts to speak in a language that sounds a little bit like French, but when he glances in Alexander’s direction midway through his sentence, he abruptly cuts himself short and touches Herc’s arm gingerly, adding in a quiet voice, “ _Oh_. He’s looking at us.”

Alexander simply waves awkwardly at the trio, then regrets it immediately when all he gets is a chorus of chuckles in response. In a quick attempt to recover, he says, “Name’s Alexander Hamilton, but I guess ‘minimum wage guy’ works, too.” He tries his best not to laugh outright at the ridiculous nickname given to him, but he can’t do anything to stop the smile that pulls at the corners of his mouth.

Jack looks absolutely triumphant when he nudges his elbow gently into Lafayette’s arm and loudly reasserts, “I _told_ you that it was minimum wage guy!”

“You _did_ have six reference letters, though,” Lafayette mumbles, his tone obstinate and unyielding as he crosses his arms over his torso, like he’s not quite willing to completely let go of the possibility of him being right, too.

It takes Alexander a brief moment to decipher exactly what he means by that, but when he does, his eyebrows knit together in clear perplexity, and he worries his lower lip between his teeth before asking, “How’d you know about that?” He’d been operating under the assumption that only Washington and Hanover themselves had undiluted access to his application materials—not other members of their staff.

Lafayette just shrugs, his curls bouncing as he does, and says, “George was impressed. Told me about it.”

“Minimum wage guy impressed the stalwart six-footer?” Herc chimes in then, sardonic astonishment thick in his voice. Lafayette scoffs.

He tries to correct him, to let them know collectively that  _just Alexander is okay, actually_. However, the two of them, barring Jack, have already returned to their lighthearted bickering by the time he can get any words out, and he drops off mid-sentence, unsure if interrupting is worth it or not. Alexander has the sneaking suspicion that neither of the men mean anything by their squabbling, but he wants to be careful.

Finally, the thing that has just been eating at him gets too unbearable to ignore, and he blurts out, “You guys know each other. How is it that, in all of New York City, you three just happen to know each other?” In return, he receives three quizzical looks. “I mean, it’s weird, right? That _you_ —” He motions towards Lafayette. “—work for Washington & Hanover, and that I just happened to run into you two yesterday. And now you know each other.”

None of the three speak for what feels like ages to Alexander, contemplative expressions on each of their faces, until finally, Herc shrugs his shoulders and says, “Maybe we should be the ones weirded out. For all we know, you’re following us.” Jack hits him softly on his stomach with the back of his hand, whispering something under his breath that Alexander can’t make out.

He repeats what Jack had called him the first time they met: “Herc.”

He’s firm when he says, “It’s Hercules.” A moment passes, then he adds, before Alexander has the opportunity to ask, “Yeah, like the Disney movie.” Alexander almost laughs, but then he locks eyes with Jack, who’s shaking his head from left to right as if to tell him that to do so would be an awful idea.

* * *

_Pensacola, Florida, the United States of America, July of 1954_

He’s not quite sure how he got to this point, but Alexander is relaxed for what feels like the first time in  _months_. He’s lounging comfortably in the driver’s seat of his Chevy, and there’s food settling in his stomach, even if it _is_ just popcorn and soda from the concessions stand of the drive-in theater, and the movie projected onto the large, white expanse of a screen is insipid enough that he can simply ignore it and focus on more important things—namely, John.

“Are you _sure_ this is a good idea?”

When John speaks, his voice so thick with anxiety that it would be cause for worry if he didn’t know the source of it, Alexander rolls his head lazily onto his shoulder to look at him, the ghost of a smile still etched onto his mouth. He knows that this—being out like this together, even if they’re hiding behind the glass panes of car windows, even if they’re under the pretense of friendship—is more difficult for John than it is for him, but he’s too content in this moment to allow it to just _end_.

“It’s _fine_ ,” he insists. The phrase is familiar on his tongue; he knows that, if he has to, he’ll repeat it to assure John that things are okay until his voice goes hoarse.

John’s words come out halting and uneven when he says, “It’s just… my father, and— I mean, you know… what he says happens to… sinners, like… and—” He stops abruptly, his gaze on his knees, intent and unfaltering. He’s right; they both know how that thought ends, and perhaps that’s why a heavy silence falls over the car.

A few seconds pass, quiet save for the static audio of the film coming through the speakers of the car, and then Alexander reaches over, places a hand tenderly on John’s knee. He can feel him tense in uncertainty beneath his fingertips for a long moment before something in him decides to settle into it. Once he knows it’s okay, he moves his thumb back and forth over the fabric of John’s slacks in an attempt to provide some kind of small comfort. Neither of them look at each other.

Alexander’s voice is hardly more than a whisper when he says, “Just don’t think about it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you so much for reading!
> 
> Thank you to love of my actual life, Ceila (@latinaavenger), for helping me with the Spanish in this chapter!
> 
> “¡Ay dios mío! Alex, te voy a dejar aquí,” means “Oh my God. Alex, I’m going to leave you here.”
> 
> “Cosas eran buenas entonces,” means “Things were good then.”
> 
> As far as Laf goes, I took a little creative license and changed it up a bit! Modern-day, 2015 Lafayette is Cajun and hails from Louisiana, which is responsible for the Southern accent that Alexander recognized. He speaks French, but his specific dialect is slightly different from traditional European French as a result of being Cajun. When he was saying, “Quoi, boug—?” he was starting to say, “Quoi, bougre?” which means “What, friend/buddy/guy/man/bro/etc.?”


End file.
